Bruce – Australia 2025

ALP 5.3%

Incumbent MP
Julian Hill, since 2016.

• Geography
• Redistribution
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
South-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Bruce covers northern parts of the Greater Dandenong and Casey council areas, along with a small part of the Monash council area. Suburbs include Berwick, Dandenong, Keysborough, Endeavour Hills, Hallam and Narre Warren.

Redistribution
Bruce expanded south-east, taking in Berwick from La Trobe and parts of Cranbourne North from Holt. These changes cut the Labor margin from 6.6% to 5.3%.

History
The seat of Bruce has existed since the 1955 election. Prior to 1996 it was a relatively safe Liberal seat, but demographic and boundary changes have seen the seat become a marginal Labor seat.

The seat was first won in 1955 by Liberal candidate Billy Snedden. Snedden served as a Cabinet minister from 1964 to 1972, serving as Billy McMahon’s Treasurer from 1971 until the government’s defeat in 1972. Snedden was elected Leader of the Liberal Party, and served in the role for the first two years of the Whitlam government. He used the Coalition’s Senate majority to block the Whitlam government’s budget, triggering the 1974 election, which he lost.

Snedden lost the Liberal leadership in early 1975, and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1976 after the election of the Fraser government. He served in the role for the entirety of the Fraser government, and after the defeat of the government in 1983 he retired from Parliament.

The 1983 Bruce by-election was won by the Liberal Party’s Ken Aldred. Aldred had previously held the seat of Henty from 1975 to 1980, when he was defeated. Aldred held Bruce until 1990, when he moved to the seat of Deakin, and held it until 1996.

Bruce was held by the Liberal Party’s Julian Beale from 1990 to 1996, when he lost to the ALP’s Alan Griffin. Griffin held Bruce for the next twenty years.

Griffin served as a shadow minister from 1998 to the election of the Rudd government in 2007, when he was appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. He left the ministry after the 2010 election. Griffin retired in 2016.

Labor’s Julian Hill won Bruce in 2016, and was re-elected in 2019 and 2022.

Candidates

Assessment
Bruce is a marginal Labor seat, but may be out of reach for the Liberal Party.

2022 result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths in Bruce have been divided into four parts: central, east, south-east and west.

Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 51.8% in the east to 62% in the west.

The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 9.1% in the centre to 11% in the east and south-east.

Election results in Bruce at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

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